Monkey C’s “Scena Ex Machina” show started Friday at the Bay Centre as part of this year’s Victoria Film Festival. It is a collection of four vintage machines that have been modified into interactive sculptures, inspired by sci-fi films.

One is an old 1950′s cash register that plays music and movie quotes with sound responsive lighting.

The second piece is a wire recorder from the 1950′s that has been made into an audio processor unit with coloured lights. Put on the headphones, and when you speak into the mic, it sounds like you’re talking to yourself from another dimension. Trippy stuff.

The third is a radio from 1941 that now picks up cellphone, wifi and bluetooth (instead of the traditional am/fm) and uses the cell data to distort the movie “Metropolis” that is projected on the wall (as a commentary on cellphone use in theatres.)

The fourth is an old projector modified into a bubble-shaped screen, that does touch-reactive video mixing, and responds differently to different people and combinations of people. It was a lot of fun on Valentine’s Day when people realized that they could affect the machine differently by working in pairs.

Participants are encourage to touch everything, and explore the works to figure them out. The Film Festival volunteers are asked to not show anybody what to do with the sculptures to allow people to explore it for themselves. Because it’s interactive, participants are required to physically engage with the work, which has created a lot of interesting responses from people, challenged some people’s comfort zones, and introduced some new ideas to people.

Scott spoke with Amanda Farrell-Low about the exhibit on CBC – you can listen to it here:

We’d like to give a shout out to The Bay Centre, The Victoria Film Festival, 10 Acres, The Whole Beast, Tedx Victoria, Kindle Arts, Madrona Gallery, One Net Marketing and Limbic Media for helping to make this happen.

The Registroid is a mutant vintage cash register that is a playable, interactive electro-house looping machine that made its first appearance at Tedx Victoria in 2014.

The piece started as a National Cash Register from 1941 and was converted it into a midi controller using an Arduino microcontroller. The antennae are sound-responsive leds running through an MSGEQ7 IC, and the sound is mixed through Max/MSP.

The Rocktopus is an interactive audio sculpture created for the Rifflandia Festival. It has LED lights and pressure sensors installed that allow users to create percussive sounds by stepping on the legs. Essentially, it’s a giant drum machine. It was installed over the festival for beta testing, and stress testing and managed to survive being […]

Behind the scenes footage of The Amazing Philli-phone auto-playing “Entry of the Gladiators” for the first time. The Amazing Philliphone is an 1889 Chicago Cottage Pump Organ that was modified to play beer bottles with various actuators, fans, servos and microcontrollers. It was created and built for Phillips Brewing Company by Scott Amos, David Parfit […]

Pentralux is an interactive led painting wall we created using technology developed by Limbic Media. It uses an X-Box Kinect to track users’ motion and translates the movement to colours on an led matrix. Over the last year, it has been installed at the Otherworld Festival, Resonance Festival, G++ Gallery, Rifflandia Music Festival and the […]

We just returned from the Bass Coast Festival in Merritt, BC, where the Bubble Organ (aka Bubble Piano) made its first public appearance. The Bubble Organ is an electronic organ that was modified with leds and toy bubbleguns. It lights up, makes sounds and blows bubbles when the keys are pressed. Here is a video […]

Just brought in an 1889 Chicago Cottage Pump Organ (still working!) to start modifying it into a midi controller for a big project that we’ll be unveiling in late spring. The tones it produces are unreal. And so was the collection of dust inside it. Here are some pics from the disassembly.

Our newest project, which you can check it out this week at the Belfry Theatre during the Spark Festival, is an interactive sense-organ. It is a modified organ that samples sounds, alters them, and maps them to the keys for playback. The keys also trigger fans to blow alluring scents at the user, light up […]